Incidentally, the argument here that this is necessary because it’s up to the Ukrainians — at this point, what is the first country that would be com… - Anatol Lieven

Russia and America are still talking on fairly cordial terms in public, as indeed are Russia and Western Europe, and the dialogue continues on energy and other subjects... The most important element was probably a negative, which is that the U.S. has still not agreed, unlike the rest of the world, to accept Russia into the WTO... the fact of the matter is, given its record at present, the U.S. is in a very weak position when it comes to lecturing Russia on a whole range of subjects, and Putin, on the other hand, is in a pretty strong position, above all, because he does have the support of the overwhelming majority of Russians.

It was remarkable how few people were asking: How does what America is doing or threatening to do or will do as an occupying force — how is that likely to resemble what America did in Vietnam? And how far do the illusions of universal primacy and of supposedly defending freedom and democracy against its enemies — how is that contributing, in fact, to the militarization of U.S. policy and the undermining of global peace?

The phrase “a new cold war” is a cheap journalistic formula, but it contains real dangers. The United States’ geopolitical competition with China is fundamentally different from that with the Soviet Union, and if the U.S. establishment frames it in the terms of the Cold War, it may do great damage to the United States and the world in general. ... Beijing’s ambitions shouldn’t be treated as an existential threat to the United States.